


my boy builds coffins (with hammer and nails)

by cashtastrophe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:42:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1605608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashtastrophe/pseuds/cashtastrophe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And plus, that’s his job, right?  Gluing soldiers back together after the desert’s done with them, sent them home with shredded bellies and missing limbs and vague memories of times when the phrase "a good night’s sleep" wasn’t followed by a wry smile.  He’s good at it, too, he’s helped more people than he hasn’t, and so it just makes sense that the Soldier—Barnes, Sam resolves, easy enough, distant enough—stumbles into his care.</p><p>In which Steve can't fix Bucky, and Sam isn't sure where to start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Super angst for everyone, fair warning. Also, some mentions of the fact that every single character in this movie, realistically, probably has some form of PTSD.
> 
> Also, someone tell me if I'm allowed to edit tags on this after posting, because we may need some warnings in the future and also this is baby's very first time posting here.

The turning point happens at midnight on his twenty-ninth birthday.And Sam nearly misses it, would have forgotten entirely if the bartender—a gruff, distinctly un-motherly type with wild, bleach-blonde hair pulled back into a severe knot at the base of her neck and a shade of lipstick too classy for a dive bar tucked between a no-tell motel and a strip joint—hadn’t slid another two fingers of whiskey, neat, across the pitted bartop with a low, “Drink up, kid.Here’s to the next twenty-nine being easier than the last, huh?”

 

Sam stares blearily into his glass and realizes that finally, finally his time as a civilian has outstripped his time overseas.He should be settled now, probably, shouldn’t still be waking up covered in cold sweat with the distinct tang of blood between his teeth, like his mouth’s shoved full of dirty pennies.  

 

And it’s better, it is, because his vision doesn’t slide sideways into machine-gun clatter and blood soaking into bright, burning sand anymore when his vets spill their own nightmares from the war.He only flinches when the ancient truck down the block backfires now, instead of dropping to the floor before he’s even thought about it.

 

His knees and elbows are grateful for that, anyways.The knots in his shoulders aren’t.

 

He drains the glass. Orders another.The bartender’s smile isn’t warm, but it’s not unfriendly, either.Maybe cautious.Like she’s seen something too, and Sam tries, for a moment, to see _soldier_ in the way she holds herself.If that’s something they share, though, she’s had longer to unlearn it than he has.She seems relaxed, loose-limbed in a way he can’t remember ever being, so maybe she never served anything more than bottom-shelf liquor.“Just one on the house, sweetheart,” she reminds him as she refills his glass.

 

Sam doesn’t expect anything else.He drinks until he can’t read the numbers on his watch anymore and tips her double what his tab’s worth, because as he gathers his coat, she reaches over the bar, grabs hold of his wrist and says,“You’re not driving, are you, honey?”

 

He can only shake his head.He doesn’t trust his tongue at this point.There’s something black and vile locked behind his teeth.He chokes it down, swallows, lets it sit tense and hot in the center of his chest and doesn’t tell her a wreck would be a welcome relief, some nights.He just tenses his jaw and she tilts her head, her eyes soft.  

 

“Have a safe walk, soldier,” she says finally, and turns to open another Miller for the elderly man slumped at the other end of the bar.

 

Despite his best efforts, Sam does.

 

*

 

He guesses, probably, that turning point is the reason he gets elected to babysit the Soldier.James.Bucky.Whatever.Because he’s an ex-vet, right, he’s had years to forget sleeping on rocks and the familiar embrace of well-worn combat boots, but Nat and Steve, they’re in it now.Steve, far as he can remember, never left combat—even if the combat left him for seventy years, Steve was asleep for all of it, and it blows Sam’s mind, sometimes, to think that the stuff he learned in high-school history was Steve’s memories of a year ago—and Nat, well.

 

He’s pretty sure she’s never been anything _but_ a soldier.

 

And plus, that’s his job, right?Gluing soldiers back together after the desert’s done with them, sent them home with shredded bellies and missing limbs and vague memories of times when the phrase _a good night’s sleep_ wasn’t followed by a wry smile.He’s good at it, too, he’s helped more people than he hasn’t, and so it just makes sense that the Soldier—Barnes, Sam resolves, easy enough, distant enough—stumbles into his care.

 

It’s probably why they’re keeping him around, he realizes, especially right now with Stark halfway into his insane design for the Falcon’s new wings.  

 

“None of that glider crap,” he’d said, and the eyes behind his designer sunglasses were only a little manic the way, Steve had assured him, he got when he was excited about a new project.“I’m making you wings, baby. Gonna make you a _real_ bird.It’s a miracle you didn’t get pulled down years ago with the way the Buckster shredded those things, you know?”  

 

Sam had just bit the inside of his cheek until it bled and tried not to remember Riley and the way he’d laughed and the way he’d burned.  

 

“But you gotta give me six months at least,” Stark had continued hurriedly, maybe noticing the way Sam’s knuckles had gone pale, he’d clenched his fists so hard.“Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?Or Icarus wasn’t.Should I be making Icarus references?That probably doesn’t give you a lot of faith in the product, huh. There’s a reason I hire people for marketing.”Then Stark had made a frustrated noise and ordered them another round because it was just Sam and Stark at the table right now, so there was no one to judge.

 

(Privately, Sam thinks Steve probably wouldn’t say anything, but Sam’s seen the envy in the way he slants his eyes at Stark’s ever-present crystal tumblers of expensive scotch.It seems rude to parade his coping mechanisms in front of a guy whose own metabolism won’t allow him the same escape.)

 

So they’re like two months into the six, maybe, and Sam’s had more than his fair share of field tests and measurements and adjustments and alterations with Stark flitting around him like a drunk hummingbird, mumbling numbers and snatches of sciency-sounding things under his breath.He doesn’t mind it, though, because those first few moments of flight, that blank, vast expanse of open sky, it makes it better.Helps, anyways, eases the knot in his chest and the set of his jaw, but Stark’s a perfectionist and they won’t clear him for duty until the wings are, at the very least, super-soldier proof.

 

Barnes, in a rare show of understanding what the fuck was happening around him, had easily torn the first prototype in half, when Stark had asked what he thought of them.He’d barely thought about it, just ripped one wing from the brace at its root, dropped it to the ground in a terrific clatter of carbon steel on expensive Italian tile and stared evenly at Stark, like he was expecting more of a challenge.Like he was bored.Maybe he was.

 

“Well fuck me sideways,” Stark had said, and drained his tumbler in one go.He’d clapped Barnes on the shoulder too hard, grinned his cheesiest grin, and said, “What would it take to get you on the payroll, Bucky my man?”He was a little too drunk, Sam thought.He knew better.

 

Barnes had decked him, maybe for the touch, maybe for the nickname, and promptly stalked away to haunt his own quarters.It was only when he was filling a Ziploc with chilled whiskey stones and pressing it to Stark’s eye that he realized Barnes had pulled the punch—otherwise, Stark would have half his face caved in, not just the beginning of a truly impressive shiner.“I know,” Stark had said as he shook some suspicious-looking white pills from their orange plastic bottle and swallowed them dry.“I think he likes me.”

 

Sam snorted.Stark passed out on his couch ten minutes later, and spent the next two weeks until the black eye faded gleefully retelling an embellished, overblown version of his brief fight with the Winter Soldier.Barnes’ expression goes stormy when Stark mentions it within earshot, but he never corrects him.

 

Sam’s not sure Barnes likes anyone, actually, not sure he remembers being human enough to even be capable of having an opinion one way or the other, but he hasn’t tried to kill them yet.That probably means something.It means they’ve all gone from “mission” to “something else,” and that’s…probably good.

 

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do for Barnes, really.He’s an ex-vet, ok, and he can sympathize with PTSD.He can offer methods of anxiety management, and good, honest shrinks who never try to pretend they can understand.He can suggest meditations and medications and a whole slew of various religious organizations and AA programs and distractions from the horrors they’ve all seen, but Barnes, well.

 

What do you do with a man who doesn’t even seem to be sure he’s still a man?

 

Sam thinks it’s mostly for Steve, getting him involved.He’s supposed to alleviate the pressure of fixing Barnes, because some days it’s abundantly clear that Steve can barely hold it together on his own, never mind coddling the killer with his best friend’s face.Not that he hasn’t tried, okay, because Steve’s spent a heartbreaking three months telling stories in a soft, private rumble that never gets more than a stony stare in response.  

 

Sam found them in front of Barnes’ file once, page after page of yellowed papers and gruesome black-and-whites spread out on the table between them, Steve with his head in his hands, crying softly as Barnes stared out the window, blank, seeming not to notice that the photographs are all of what he looks like flayed open, bloodied.

 

And Sam’s pretty useless around here anyways until his wings are done, so.Whatever he can do to help, because, selfishly, he’s always hated having too much time on his hands to think.

 

“It’s…I thought it would be better,” Steve confesses when Sam approaches him with the offer.His eyes are dry but red, and he scrubs a tired hand over them.“It’s been months and…nothing.He doesn’t speak to me, he doesn’t look at me.I wish he’d try to fight me, try to do something, I just—“ _why won’t he notice me,_ Steve does not say, but Sam gets it anyways.Steve would prefer being Bucky’s mission, than the Soldier’s jailkeeper.  

 

“They warned you it could be permanent,” Sam says, carefully.“Even with the files, we don’t…I mean, it’s not like anyone has a lot of experience with what’s been done to him.”

 

“I know,” Steve says.“I know.”He’s quiet for a very long moment.“Sometimes I wonder if saving him was kind.”

 

Sam has wondered the same thing since the day Steve showed up at headquarters with an unconscious, hobbled Barnes slung over his shoulder and a steely set to his eyes, like he was daring his team to tell him no, he couldn’t keep the stray he’d dragged home.Steve had been gone for two and a half weeks at that point, searching, and Nat wisely kept her mouth shut as Steve deposited Barnes’ limp, filthy body on the couch.

 

She raised her eyebrows at Sam, though, and throughout the next few weeks, she made herself scarcer than usual, even for her.Sam imagined she was remembering the angry red scar in her side where Barnes had nearly clipped several extremely vital organs.Sam can’t blame her, really—he still has nightmares about his one remaining wing crumpled, useless at his side as the black, black water rushes towards him at a breakneck speed.

 

But Steve, he looks so tired, and this is what Sam does anyways, so.He tries to help.

 

“Just…I don’t know what to say to him,” Steve admits.Hopeful blue eyes fix on his, like he thinks Sam can fix this the way he fixes his vets and Sam doesn’t have the heart to admit he’d only ever been able to patch them up when the cracks form, and send ‘em home to wait for the next round of flashbacks.He keeps his vets moving, keeps them engaged in the world.Gives them things to focus on.“You…you’ve done this before, right?Dealt with…stuff like this?”

 

And Sam hasn’t, because he’s not sure anyone on the planet has, but he shrugs one shoulder and promises Steve he’ll give it his best shot.

 

“I can’t guarantee anything,” he warns, and Steve nods, slow, like he understands. 

 

It’s not like he ever discusses it with Barnes or anything, because mostly Barnes seems content to pretend he doesn’t exist.He’s not even sure Barnes knows his name, only that they once tried to kill each other, and Sam imagines that particular honor has been afforded to—though maybe not survived by—a lot of people.No reason for him to register in Barnes’ peripheral, and yet, the next time he hears the familiar bitten-off grunts of a nightmare from the room down the hall, he pushes himself to his feet and pads towards Barnes’ door.

 

He wasn’t sleeping anyways.

 

He meant what he said to Steve that first day, about the beds.He half expects to find Barnes sprawled out on the floorboards, because he doubts that Barnes was given a bed those rare times Hydra let him sleep.Hell, Sam remembers nights like that, remembers spreading his blanket and his thinnest pillow out on the hard carpet beside his bed, because the mattress was so soft he thought he might drown in it.And he knows, from his past five years working at the VA, that this is a common reaction, especially in the early stages after a return home.

 

What he doesn’t expect, though, is to find nothing in Barnes’ room.His bed is made with eerie military precision, the lights are off, the room looks sparse. Untouched.No personal effects, except for the boots leaned against the wall near the door.And Sam blinks sleepily at the empty room, wondering if maybe Barnes was in Steve’s room, and—

 

Well.It’s not his place to ask.

 

Except then, that low, keeling wail Sam’s never heard another human besides Barnes make and he realizes Barnes has scrunched all six-foot-whatever of his frame into the minuscule space underneath his bed.When Sam crouches down, he sees Barnes huddled in on himself, eyes fever-bright and wary, like he was never asleep at all.

 

Which makes the sounds so much worse.

 

Barnes does it again, makes a noise like a wounded dog and squeezes his eyes shut like he’s trying to keep it in.He probably is—his hair is damp, plastered to his skin where it hangs over his face and he’s breathing like he’s winded, like he’s been running.

 

Like he’s scared.

 

“ _Pozhaluysta_ ,” he says, voice husky with disuse, cracking halfway through the word.It’s the first thing he’s ever said directly to Sam.  

 

Sam doesn’t speak a fucking word of Russian, but the way Barnes shrinks back from him makes it pretty clear that he doesn’t want Sam anywhere near him.Sam’s only too happy to oblige.

 

“ _Pozhaluysta_ ,” Barnes says again, miserably, and Sam can’t—he’s not a shrink, okay, he’s not equipped for this, this _thing_ hiding under the bed like a cornered animal and so he backsteps, edges out of Barnes’ room, into the darkened hallway and back to his own room.  Hew can''t do anything, he reminds himself sharply.  This is way out of his field of expertise.  He doesn't know what he was thinking, agreeing to help Steve deal with this. 

 

The only sound Barnes makes for the rest of the night is a strangled sound like he’s choking on his own tongue as the door clicks shut behind Sam.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Natasha really, really doesn't want to see this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for like, angst and weird Christian imagery, I guess?

Natasha had a dog once.

 

It wasn’t a puppy when they got it, really.It was that awkward adolescence of a half-grown dog, limbs too long and body too sharp, tripping over itself every time someone stumbled through the doorway of their shabby, frigid little apartment building, situated too close to the front door of their apartment.He was trying to be a good guard dog, Natasha—not then, but now, looking back she always keeps the same name—knows, and understands, but the thing is.

 

The thing is, this dog grew into its adulthood with a constant parade of invisible threat outside their front door, poor thing, heard nothing but the indiscriminate _thumpthumpthump_ of boots on the stairs and barked himself hoarse, trying to warn them.

 

Charming, for the first six months of the dog’s life and then, after a run-in with the front grill of a battered four-door sedan: a neuroses.Suddenly, Bruno didn't just bristle at strangers, he lunged. Snarled and leapt straight for the throat, the groin, the soft, aching spots where he could tear in with his teeth like knives through butchers' paper.It was like someone had snuck in during the night and twisted Bruno's dials up to eleven, made him into all razor-edge extremes, forever about to snap.

 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Natasha’s mother said, hands braced on ample hips as she frowned down at Bruno, sprawled on his back at her feet in the futile hopes of a belly rub.“He barks all hours of the night.We’re all a wreck in the morning—and it can’t be good for the baby.I’m worried he’ll bite.”

 

And finally, he did. Natasha had been so careful with him, so cautious to follow his animal logic. Never sneak up behind him, never approach without warning, never stare him down, never challenge. Never make him fight, and she'd never have to lose him. Even if wasn't as much fun as before, when she could tackle him and throw her arms around his thick neck and let him drag her around the yard while the grass rubbed her knees a sickly bright green.Bruno had been good to her—she owed him this.

 

Except she was balancing half a jam sandwich and an apple and a glass of milk in her chubby hands when she slipped, stupid girl, the glass slipped from her fingers and shattered on the tile near Bruno's wide head. There were shards of glass in his face--she could see the bright pricks of blood in the white fur near his left eye. She didn't blame him, really.

 

She never saw him move, never saw more than a suggestion of fur and heavy teeth andthen there was a sharp, sudden pain where he’d taken hold of the baby curve of her jaw and _crushed._

 

It barely scarred and she was lucky, the doctor said, because she was growing up to be very beautiful.Natasha only scowled because what did that matter, what did it matter when her best friend was going away?She picked at the scabs out of spite, made sure they stayed.

 

Every night of her short, hateful life, Natasha had fallen asleep with the bony weight of the dog at her back, his guttural, even snores soothing her to sleep and then, suddenly, the afternoon she came home from the doctor’s with a wide cotton bandage taped to her cheek, he was gone.

 

Her mother said Bruno had gone to a farm, somewhere he could run and run and run all day, no neighbors to bite and no cats to menace, just a perfect field with beautiful, rolling hills and sprawling oaks and a fresh spring, probably, for Bruno to drink from.

 

Natasha was six.She wasn’t stupid.She’d seen the shotgun in her father’s truck, smelled the acrid tang of gunpowder on his shirt when he swung her up into a hug the night Bruno went to the farm.She knew there was no field.She knew Bruno wasn’t running anywhere, not anymore, and a rage burned in her small belly, deep and dark and awful.

 

Twenty-odd years later, she meets Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes and, for the first time, understands why her parents did what they did.Putting Bruno down was an act of mercy as much as self-preservation—after all, what kind of a life was that, for a dog, wound tight and nervous all his days, flinching at shadows and barking himself into a frenzy five times an hour?Better to send him off somewhere quiet and peaceful than turn him out into the streets which, since he’d bitten a handful of children already, was the likely outcome otherwise.

 

Bucky watches her like Bruno did, shuttered and wary, cagey, and she wishes for all she’s worth that she’d been the one to find him, not Steve.It would have been a bullet between the eyes for him if she had, no question, neat and efficient.No cleanup necessary—Bucky didn’t exist, and you can’t trace a man who doesn’t exist.Natasha wouldn’t have lost any sleep over it, either—in fact, she’s fairly sure she would sleep better, knowing Steve’s single, wretched weakness isn’t out there, waiting for a vulnerable point to strike.Steve’s all vulnerable points, she thinks bitterly.Soft, compassionate.Weak, especially where the Soldier is concerned. A liability.

 

Because Steve hasn’t been bitten yet.That’s evident in the casual way he pushes Bucky around, crowds into his space like this man isn’t fully capable of snapping his neck without even thinking.Steve’s acting like, like—

 

Well.Like she would’ve if she’d got her dog back, maybe.The difference is, she was a child and Steve is a grown man with the fate of the world occasionally balanced on his shoulders.A stupid grown man with a fondness for this one-armed, silent sociopath that could actually kill them all, if her suspicions are correct.

 

Her suspicions are usually correct.

 

She doesn’t like the way Bucky studies her, like he’s memorizing the way she moves, filing it away for later access—maybe when he tries to drive a blade between her ribs again.It's always out of the corners of his eyes when he does it, and he knows. He knows she sees.

 

He grins, sharp white canines bared in a feral imitation of a smile it looks like he borrowed from Steve. He creeps her out.He makes her skin crawl in a way she really can’t explain, like he’s…wrong, somehow.Off.Like one of those portraits where the eyes follow you around the room, staring you down no matter where you stand.

 

Steve, unsurprisingly, announces that Bucky’s staying.And, he adds, with an apologetic glance to Natasha, like she’d tell him to kick out the last remnant of his old life he’s got left, he’ll be safe.Guarded.Under 24/7 watch, he explains, and in the Tower, at least, they’re never far away from emergency sedatives.A safeguard for Bruce’s visits, usually, and if the drugs are strong enough to take out the Hulk, they’ll probably keep Bucky down for a while.

 

_Probably_ , she mouths to Sam, who shakes his head, but Steve looks at Bucky like he still can’t believe he got a second chance, so.

 

Bucky stays.Natasha stays busy.Keeps out of his way, for a while.

 

Until she’s faced with Bucky finally, lodged between the second and third dryers in the basement--although with the way Tony decorates, even calling it a basement seems unfair, this white-and-chrome designer monstrosity. It looks more like a nightclub than a laundry room, but she's sure Bucky's logic was sound.Seek shelter, low to ground. Quiet. Sparsely populated. Hunker down and don't move, don't breathe, let your brain turn off and slide into the numb buzzing awareness of _wait._

 

Except. Except he has his face turned to the wall, his knees braced on the buffered cement floor, back rigid, shoulders squared. It reminds her of church as a little girl, of the jumbled aerobics of stand-kneel-sit-pray and of squinting up at the horrified, bloodied face of the Christ hung, near life size, painted with garish blue bruising and bright slashes of blood, over the church door.

 

Bucky, despite his predictably Irish-Catholic upbringing, does not strike her as a religious man.Still, there’s a devotion to the way he bows his head, eyes closed, ritual in the way he murmurs soft Russian to himself like a benediction.It looks incredibly uncomfortable.He’s done this before, she realizes, and it’s probably a testament to how dismal she is at basic chores, since this is the first she’s seen of it.The first real, person-like thing she’s ever seen Bucky do, really, because he doesn’t seem to need to eat or sleep much.There’s nothing more human, Natasha thinks, than the desperate futility of prayer. 

 

She’s too far away to hear much more than the familiar cadence of her mother tongue, but even her curiosity can’t bring her to interrupt this.She shifts her laundry basket from right hip to left and she can probably just hold off for a few hours, let him finish…whatever insane thing he’s doing right now.She’ll come back later and pretend she hasn’t seen.Because she really, really doesn’t want to know, okay, she has some idea of what he’s experienced, but she can’t—

 

She can’t look back at that.Can’t think about it.Doesn’t want to know what her former people are capable of, what cruelties he’d seen in a filthy four-by-four concrete cell in the basement of a Russian military storehouse, because it used to be something she was capable of, too.

 

Capable of? Hah. _Talented_ at.

 

The saving grace being, of course, that her victims had never lived long enough for her to see the aftermath.

 

She’ll leave him to it, she decides, except.Except she lets her gaze drop from the back of his head—his hair’s still filthy and matted, she’s not sure he’s showered since he got here, and he certainly hasn’t changed his clothes—down to his arms, crossed behind his back.Bound at the wrists with a leather belt she’s pretty sure Tony has been missing. Tight enough that his real hand is flushed a mottled purple, angry red where the belt bites skin.His sleeve is rolled up past the elbow.The skin of his inner wrist is impossibly white, and she wonders, dimly, how long he’s been wearing that same coat.

 

What it must have taken for him to bind himself like that.He’d have to nearly have wrenched an elbow out of socket, just to buckle the damn thing.And the thin, expensive strip of Italian leather probably couldn’t hold Bucky’s flesh and blood arm if he wanted to escape, never mind his scuffed metal one, but.

 

Well.He doesn’t seem to want to escape.

 

_I didn’t sign on for this,_ she thinks bitterly.And yet.

 

“Tony’s going to want that back,” she says, dropping her basket onto the closest dryer.She doesn’t miss the way he stills.His eyes stay closed, his head stays bowed, but he’s tensed, prepared.Listening, maybe.

 

And then, because she doesn’t have the patience Steve does, “What are you doing, anyways?”

 

His answer comes a few beats too late, in Russian, and it’s not what she’s expecting.“Trying to sleep.”  

 

“In the laundry room?”

 

“It’s usually unoccupied.”

 

_I bet,_ she thinks wryly.They’re all terrible at chores.“Does it help?” she asks as she opens the washer and begins loading her darks—most of her wardrobe, okay—in.

 

He shifts a little, at that.“What?”

 

“You know,the—“ she holds up her wrist, waves it at him.“Does it help you sleep?”

 

He doesn’t turn, but his eyes slit open, shift towards where she’s standing.She pours detergent into the cap and waits.

 

“Yes,” he says finally. Then, unbidden, “I know who you are.”

 

Natasha pulls a face. Wonderful. “I was wondering,” she admits.“We’ve never met, if you’re wondering.”

 

He shakes his head, filthy curls whispering over the leather of his jacket.“No. I know.I…heard about you? Read about you?”He huffs out something, low, and she thinks he might be trying to laugh.“They haven’t forgotten you.They talked about you, sometimes, when they’d—”He bites it off, and seems to curl inwards.“They haven’t forgotten you,” he says again.

 

“Or forgiven me,” she agrees.“That was a long time ago.”

 

“For you.”

 

Yes, she thinks, as she fiddles with the overly-complicated dials on the machine.A decade for her, long enough to have renamed herself, rebuild herself.It could have been last month for Bucky, for all she knows.The cells.The cold.  

 

God, Russia was so _cold._

 

“It was a long time ago for you, too,” she reminds him.“They’re probably all dead by now.”

 

It doesn’t seem to comfort him.“Yes, I know,” he mutters.He speaks Russian with no accent at all.Clean and clipped, like he’s reading from a textbook, like he’s an automated response.Preprogrammed.

 

“Not Hydra, though.”

 

And Bucky turns to her.Lifts his face to hers.Meets her eyes and his pupils are tiny pinpricks in irises the color of dirty steel.

 

Smiles.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tony is too often the bearer of bad news.
> 
> (If triggers are a thing for you, please see the end of this chapter for warnings)

For the first few days Steve doesn't need to worry about what to call him.

For the first few days, he doesn't need to speak to him at all. The Soldier is...fighting? detoxing? Working out how this captivity functions, maybe, learning this new cage. Feral, nearly, raging and howling and attacking because he's used to lines being enforced, and they haven't punished him for it yet. He pushes them like a wild dog and the worst thing for him is to be left alone right now, unchecked, but.

Steve is so tired.

He watches the footage later, in the privacy of his own quarters. It becomes a nightly routine, revisiting his failings in the grainy blue-black of the Soldier's security cameras. Steve needs the distance from it, the few hours' buffer so he knows that he couldn't have prevented anything he sees.

Because what he sees-- _God._

It's what he expected, for the most part, the furious thrashing of a panicked animal. The Soldier upends his bed, tears holes in the coverings with his teeth, scatters the toiletries Nat had so thoughtfully provided. Shreds the stacks of paperback books left by the bedside. Throws his food back in his attendants' faces. Swears up a storm the whole time, weaving his way through at least fourteen different languages with barely a break in between, like he hasn't noticed he's doing it.

There is nothing recognizable in him. Nothing left, not his language or his name or even the way he stands, shoulders hunched, head lowered. Except sometimes--sometimes he'll shrug his single remaining shoulder or tilt his head to the side in this perfect, particular way and all Steve can see is dark hair, carefully slicked back with Brylcreem Steve knows they can't afford but always seem to have around anyways, and a smile like the business side of a blade and--

_Stop._

The dismantling of the room took him barely two days. He'd collapsed for a couple of hours after, burrowed into the exposed guts of his mattress like it was a nest. And then, predictably, he had turned on himself.

Steve would be lying if he said he hadn't seen it coming. With no furniture to destroy, with no outlet, it wasn't like the Soldier had much of an alternative.

He bites a ragged hole into the underside of his human arm one night, right between the tendons. Steve's gut clenches as he watches, sharp and sick. Lurches as he watches Bucky--his brother, his best friend, the only thing he'd had his whole life long that was really worth a damn because Peggy was wonderful, but she'd never really been Steve's--spit mouthfuls of blood onto the concrete floor of his cell. He never passes out, of course, not even when his pulse has slowed to a crawl. Not even when the blood oozes, sluggish, where it had flowed before, out from the spaces between his teeth, dripping down his chin. He only bows his head, sucks harder, determined, and bites bites _bites._

It takes nearly twenty awful minutes of watching Bucky chew his own arm to ribbons before Steve realizes what he's doing, which still doesn't explain why whoever was on duty-- _Tony_ , he thinks unkindly, because that's what Howard would do, watch and wait--didn't step in and stop it.

Bucky spits again and with it, something small, rounded and metallic and Steve can't--oh.

His tracker.

Deactivated, obviously, because Starks are a thorough breed, but Bucky has no way of knowing that. He was drugged to the gills for Tony's inspection of him. Which had been fair, of course, but also nauseating to watch him sprawled, corpselike, on an exam table while Tony poked and prodded and looked far, far too much like his father.

He'd taken care of the trackers, though, even the one in the back of Bucky's neck, so Steve really should probably learn to like the guy a little more. He'd even managed to disable most of the cybernetic arm's functions except, of course, the ability to actually use it as an arm.

"I can't just take it off," he'd said and scowled, that same cranky look he'd get after three days locked in his lab. "It'd unbalance him, for one thing, and he's already spent the last seventy years building muscle mass to support this hunk of junk--" he knocked his knuckles against the arm "--and man, don't even talk to me about what it's done to his spine, the poor bastard. And the way they've got him wired into that thing! Do Russians own anatomy books? Is that a thing, do you guys actually have, like, doctors and stuff because I don't understand why they'd let a _trained monkey with a bone saw_ work on him instead of anyone who'd ever set foot in a goddamn _surgical theater_ \--"

Natasha didn't dignify that with a response.

"Anyways," Tony had said, scruffing an exasperated hand through his hair for approximately the millionth time in the six hours since Steve had dragged Bucky home, "I can build him a new one. I have the technology. But, as embarrassing as this hunk of junk is, it'll just fuck him up worse to be armless right now."

So they'd left it and mostly super-soldier-proofed his quarters and, well.

"There was something in the arm," Tony says over his shoulder. Steve jumps.  It's quieter than he normally is, which Steve's grateful for, but it's also one in the morning and he's in Steve's room. Behind him. Steve hadn't even noticed. "I think they could pump him full of drugs remotely maybe? If you're gonna turn a guy into a walking, talking nightmare I guess you'd need a way to turn him off." He rubs at his nose. "I deactivated that too. Obviously."

"What was it?" Steve asks, hushed, as he watches Bucky's tiny form on the screen pick up the tracker and turn it over in his hand. "What were they giving him?"

"Man," Tony says, dropping down onto Steve's mattress. He bounces a little. Steve's not sure he's realized he's doing it--it's one in the morning, after all, and Tony has circles under his eyes like this time of night isn't kind to him, either. "What _weren't_ they giving him, more like. I found psychedelics, barbiturates, sedatives--you name a drug ever used in mind control, basically, and I found traces of it." He bites his lip, then, and Steve had only known him for a little under a year, but he looks almost apologetic. Like there's something he doesn't want to say.

The idea of that is terrifying.

"How much--have you read his file yet?" Tony says finally. Steve shakes his head.

"I didn't--I didn't want to. To know. Not yet. Not while he's still--" Steve makes a vague gesture towards the computer monitor. "Why? Did you--" he swallows, hard. "Did you find something else?" _Something worse_ , he doesn't say, because he can't actually imagine anything worse than watching Bucky dragging his fingers absently through a pool of his own blood.

He's painting little swirls on the floor with it now.

Tony is biting a hole in his lower lip by the looks of it. "I know they didn't have it in your day or anything but, uh. Do you." He clears his throat and looks more uncomfortable than Steve thought he was capable of being. His eyes flick up to meet Steve's and then skitter away almost immediately, coming to rest on the monitor. "Do you know what Viagra does to a guy?"

Steve manages to make it to the bathroom before he is abruptly and violently sick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (tw: vague references to non-con, which will be less vague in later chapters, blood, self-harm, and just generally everything being awful always)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Bucky isn't Bucky and he's not James Buchanan Barnes, either.

The thing is. The thing is, he lied to the Captain.  The thing is, he remembers James Buchanan Barnes.

 

The thing is, he remembers James Buchanan Barnes the way he remembers almost nothing else—he was loud. Brash. Stupid.  Spit through broken teeth at his captors and snarled out things like _just wait just you wait ’til he finds you_ and _you’ll be sorry, alla you, he’s gonna rip you apart he’s gonna he’s_ gonna _._

 

If James Buchanan Barnes had asked, the asset could have told him no one was coming. He could have told him no one ever came, no one ever left, there was nothing but the grey monotony of these walls and occasional bright, terrifying bouts of pain.  But James Buchanan Barnes never asked, because he wasn’t the sort of man who needed answers.  He paced instead, back and forth, back and forth in endless, tight circles because he craved nothing more than he craved _action_ , something to _do._

 

The thing is, the asset— _no, Bucky now, he calls you Bucky so you need to call you Bucky too_ —the thing is, _Bucky_ isn’t James Buchanan Barnes.

 

And he doesn’t mean that as the heavy-handed metaphor it undoubtedly is—He was there, in his cell, long before they dragged James Buchanan Barnes back to life, short an arm and any real grasp on what year it was.  He was there because he was always there, born and raised in that kennel like the dog they’d bred him to be. If he had parents, he’d never met them, and, he assumed, they were probably dead long before he had a chance of forming any real memory of them.

 

Which left only him and the endless rotations of white lab coats and faces that he never bothered learning, because it wasn’t like they ever stopped to meet his eyes anyways.  Years and years and years of that, an eternity of that—he didn’t know how long, how could he? he didn’t even know how old he was—until the day they’d dug James Buchanan Barnes out of the ice and strapped his still form down to the table usually reserved for the asset. 

 

After they brought him James Buchanan Barnes, there was still pain, of course, still blank slate walls and bright lights that never seemed to go dark, never let him sleep, but. There was something else, too.

 

There was the awful, cloying first few days where James Buchanan Barnes hadn’t done much more than lie motionless and muttering to himself on a thin army cot in the cell adjacent.  The asset hadn’t known what to do, then—he’d been the once pacing, back and forth, back and forth, completely transfixed by the transparent wall their cells shared.  He didn’t understand what this was. He’d never had a companion before.  Not one that stayed locked up the way he did, anyways, and so he watched James Buchanan Barnes as he slept and his skin burned and sometimes he was so still the asset couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

 

Sometimes, he’d shake and whimper and whisper, soft and dry as a ghost, _Steve_.

 

There was the way James Buchanan Barnes refused to allow himself to be called James Buchanan Barnes.  “Bucky,” he said, the first time the asset tried it, “Or if you can’t manage, James is fine.”  

 

The asset frowned.  He didn’t do well with conditional—if he was sometimes James and sometimes Bucky and sometimes someone else entirely, how could he stand that, how could he figure out which one to use, because the asset was always the asset, would always _be_ the asset always, always, _always_.

 

It gave him a headache, anyway, so he stopped trying to figure out what James meant by that, and just added a new rule to the ever-growling list.  That was easier. That was Procedure.

 

_James._

 

James was not Procedure. That was half the reason the asset listened to him in the first place—he’d come from outside, after all, and had three names all his own, so he’d been human once.  He’d had all those things the asset had read about when he was young, when he was learning to read and they didn’t know yet how confused stories would leave him.

 

(Hadn’t taken them long to realize he found nothing relatable or understandable in children’s books, just a few baffling weeks of trying to figure out what, exactly, a _family_ was supposed to be, and why children slept in beds and played with brightly-coloured blocks of wood and soft pillows in the shapes of animals.  He’d asked too many questions about it, he’d guessed, taken up too much of the lab coats’ time asking what _sports_ and _school_ were before all the bright, cardboard-covered books had disappeared and been replaced by manuals and textbooks.  

 

Those were much easier.)

 

James had a home, and a job, though, and he sometimes ate pizza when he could afford it and he’d had a cat, once.  “Mean old thing,” he said.  “Ma kept it around for the rats, I think.  Bit the hell out of Steve once, he—“  and then he made the same sound he made every time he slipped up and mentioned _Steve_.  

 

He was quiet for a long time, chewing on his cracked lower lip ’til it bled, sluggish, into the corner of his mouth.  The asset waited—he was good at waiting—but James just kept staring into nothing over the asset’s left shoulder, like he was seeing more than cinder block and a matte coat of paint.

 

“What was it like?” the asset asked finally, about two minutes after it became clear James had no intention of continuing.  James blinked at him once, twice.

 

“What was what like?”

 

“The cat.”

 

James frowned.  He did that a lot, but especially when the asset asked questions, and the asset was beginning to suspect he was asking questions he should have known the answer to.  “I don’t know.  Fat. Cranky.  Killed its fair share of rats, though, and it was nice to have around in the wintertime.”  He tipped his head to the side, just barely.  “Or were you—were you asking what cats are like in general?”

 

“I’ve never seen one.”  The asset shrugged, lifted one shoulder and dropped it in what, he was pretty sure, was a movement he’d picked up from James.

 

“Christ,” James said, low and soft and just a little like the way he said _Steve_.  “How long have you been here?”

 

It was a fair question. It also wasn’t one the asset had any hope of answering, so he didn’t bother.  James just watched him the rest of the night as he tossed and turned on his pallet with that strange expression on his face, like something hurt.  The asset didn;t need to sleep but he pretended to anyways, because something about the way James looked at him twisted low in his gut, dull and aching.

 

He watched them rebuild James’ arm less than a week later, watched as they dug a little deeper under the already-ruined flesh of his left shoulder and laid him open for the heavy steel replacement.  He watched James’ face carefully as the thing healed, studied him during every adjustment, because he kept doing this thing where his skin went pale and clammy and his teeth ground together and stubborn, unwilling tears pricked at the corners of his screwed-shut eyes.  He made sounds, too, low animal sounds like he was about to be sick, and the asset didn’t understand.  He didn’t understand why James screamed sometimes because didn’t he know that made it worse?  Hadn’t he learned anything at all on the exam table?

 

“Pain,” James grunted when he’d asked.  “Are you joking? Pain. I’m in pain.  The damn thing _hurts_.”

 

James was shaking, slumped up in the corner where they shared a cell wall.  The Asset couldn’t touch him, of course—the thick glass between them saw to that—but he could lean up against the wall, too, and where their shoulders nearly pressed together, The Asset could almost, _almost_ feel warmth.

 

“Of course it does,” he said and he must have sounded confused, must have sounded _something_ , because James, sweat still beading on his brow, threw him this wry, bitter little grin.

 

It was the first time anyone had ever smiled at the asset and he immediately tried to mimic it.  He must not have got the movement quite right, though, because James’ grin faded instantly.

 

“God, you’re terrifying,” he said, but he said it almost like a laugh, even though the asset was fairly sure nothing was funny.

 

He didn’t have much time to puzzle it over, anyways—they came for him the next morning.  Left James in his cage and took the asset instead, which was unusual these days, but the asset knew better than to ask.  He’d learned better than to ask.  He let them cuff him and shackle his ankles, let them lead him to the table and lay down meekly the moment his current guard—a big, bald man the asset didn’t recognize—curled a hand around the back of his neck.  He knew how to be pliant.  He knew how to be _good_ , and as they slipped the rubber bit between his teeth to stop him biting off his own tongue, he didn’t bother to hope this wouldn’t hurt.

 

They put him under the moment they strapped him down, though, and that was new.  Anesthesia was unheard of for him, painkillers a rarity, but there he was and there they were, and he slept gratefully the moment the mask touched his face.  It should have been terrifying, because _new_ never meant anything good, but with the heavy drug weaving through his veins, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

 

He had no idea how long he was out, but when he woke up, he woke up to James, crouched at their shared wall, frowning at him.

 

“We’re twins now,” was all he said, and knocked gently on his own metal arm.  The asset stared down at his left hand—or where his left hand used to be, anyways, because his new arm stopped neatly at the elbow, just an empty socket where, he imagined, his forearm would eventually fit.  They did it to James like that too, in pieces, testing the limits of what additions his body could handle, but the asset didn’t feel feverish the way James had been.  He wasn’t shaking.  He didn’t feel much of anything, really, maybe a little sore, but no worse than any other time he’d been on the table.

 

“Your face,” James said and then paused, like he wasn’t quite sure what should follow.  

 

The asset reached up with his remaining hand and touched the curve of his jaw.  It was puffy, swollen and bruised but, more importantly, it was entirely the wrong shape.  He’d never seen his own reflection clearly, not once, not ever, but he knew the way his bones should feel.  He knew his nose had a ridge in it where it’d been broken too many times, but that was gone now, shaved down and smooth.  His hair had even been cut, just dark fringe sweeping over his right eye instead of the heavy, dirty curls he was so used to.

 

“Twins,” James repeated, and it’s nothing like the way he said _Steve_.  It’s a little like the way he screamed, though, rough and broken, almost like he was choking on it.  “It’s like looking in a mirror, God, it’s so _strange_.”

 

It wasn’t strange for the asset, not really.  It still isn't.

 

Not even when the Captain comes for him decades later, not when he’s hunched on the edge of a bathtub while the Captain combs the worst of the tangles out of his hair. It’s not strange to look in the bathroom mirror and see James’ face staring back at him.  It isn’t strange to take his name, to go pliant and still again and let the Captain call him _Bucky_ because if he needs to be Bucky to survive, well.

 

He doesn’t know what he looked like before, anyways.


	5. Chapter 5

Tony is, in all honesty, surprised it never occurred to Steve before.  

 

Didn’t expect him to have given it much thought, okay, and maybe that’s what’s got the good captain retching out his guts in the ensuite, because it’s one thing to _think_ you know, and it’s a separate beast altogether, having it confirmed for you, in all caps, underlined, notarized and signed in triplicate by Tony’s giant stupid mouth.

 

He probably could have broken this news better.

 

He rubs what he really, really hopes are soothing circles between Steve’s shoulder blades and Steve doesn’t tense up or pull away or anything, so maybe Tony’s doing it right.  Steve’s not trembling, exactly, but there are these tiny, fine tremors like his muscles are all pulled too tight and straining for—

 

Well.  Tony would be angry, too.

 

Because it had crossed his mind approximately two seconds after he’d been shown the first picture of Bucky unmasked, all that long, curly, _completely impractical_ hair doing its very best to cover anything recognizable about his face.  But he had a mask for that, a mask that hid him pretty efficiently for the last seventy-odd years, so why risk long hair blocking his vision, why not tie it back, why not buzz it all off while you’re at it—

 

Ah.  

 

If Tony squints just right, if he does his very best to ignore the shattered way Steve’s attempt at nonchalant professionalism crumples six feet to the left of him, if he tries to forget that the Soldier shares a face with a World War II-era hero Tony had idolized for a brief span of maybe the first eleven years of his life and will _never ever mention to any of them, thank you_ , he can almost see the appeal.  

 

Almost.  The Soldier isn’t a handsome man now, and Tony’s not actually a psychopath, but there’s a rough, feral grace to him that men like Pierce, men like Rumlow would see as a challenge, see as something to bend and bend and bend ’til it broke, so. The hair’s decorative. The hair’s not for the Soldier, it’s for his handlers to, well, _handle_.

 

Didn’t take long to make the leap from there.

 

He didn’t even need the files that showed up on his desk—okay, one of his desks—three weeks after.  He’d read about MKULTRA years ago, as part of some manic point he’d been proving to himself to study the worst he could from human history, some unnecessarily dramatic chorus of _those who don’t learn_ and _doomed to repeat it_ chasing its way through his skull, so he knew.  He knew it had happened during that project, and all collected data had indicated it worked, and worked well so there’s no real reason to assume it wasn’t part of the Red Room’s strategy to mold the Soldier.  

 

It made sense, really, if he detached and looked at it clinically which, as it turns out, is the mindset necessary for dealing with pretty much anything related to the Assassin Formerly Known as Bucky.  Because he didn’t know the guy, granted, but he knew the type—quick to anger but quicker to laugh, cocky, with a shit sense of humor and a self-destructive streak approximately one icy valley wide.  Good with words in a way Tony had to be two scotches in to achieve, and annoyingly handsome with no apparent effort—good with men, _great_ with women.  Charming sonuvabitch, the kind you were never quite sure if you wanted to fight or fuck.

 

Of course it made sense, if you looked at it that way.  What better way to break a man like that?

 

Tony didn’t want to look at it any way, thank you, he’d really prefer to get back to his daydreams and concept sketches of a new arm for Bucky.  Something in a matte black, he was thinking, tungsten carbide, maybe, because really how did it make any sense to have a giant shiny steel limb on display when your whole _thing_ depended so heavily on being subtle?  Stupid.  Stupid, and dated and so typically Russian that it bordered on parody, and it irked him in a stupid, self-involved way.  He could make it better for Bucky, not inn any really helpful way, but at the very least he could give him an arm that wasn’t half-designed to disable him.  Fury had hinted at a killswitch in a very decidedly unsubtle way, but Tony didn’t want to think about that.  He didn’t want to think about any of it.

 

He just wanted to work.

 

He didn’t want to read the files.  He didn’t want to know specifics at all, but the file was accompanied by a grim Natasha sporting a brand-new black eye gained, presumably, in the process of retrieving this information, so.  He was probably supposed to read it.  “This isn’t my thing,” he said to her, grumpily.

 

“Too bad,” she responded, “Because the other choice is letting Steve deal with it, and considering how well he handled the microwave, letting him take point on tracking down his brainwashed best friend will probably turn out just fine.”  She folded her arms and stared him down, impressively superior for a woman who comes up to his chin.  “He microwaved a fork,” she reminded him pointedly, as if anyone could possibly forget.

 

“Why can’t you? You’re good with this, this _Russia_ stuff.”  He waved vaguely at the files, as they somehow indicted the entirely of her mother country, and it took him a few beats, took the slight press of her lips together for him to remember.  “I didn’t,” he started, and wasn’t sure what to follow up with.  Apologies never were his forte.

 

“I know,” she said, and half her mouth twisted up in that smiles that means she just really, really enjoyed seeing Tony, so poised with ten mics in his face and a dozen glassy-eyed camera lenses trained on him, fumble for something approximating words. "But Fury thinks I'm too close to it to be able to offer an objective opinion."

 

"And Steve isn't?" Tony asked, incredulous. "He really buys that grin-and-bear-it crap Steve's selling, doesn't he?”  Or maybe Director Fury realized that out of all of their motley crew, Steve was the only one really able to herd them in some general direction.  And, to Steve’s credit, no one seriously important died when he was in charge—Coulson, the lying little bastard, had been spotted at a Starbucks in Miami three weeks after New York—so.  Tony could kind of see Director Fury’s faith in the man.  God knows it’d be a mess if anyone else tried it.

 

He had a vision, briefly, of Clint perched atop the Hulk’s ropy shoulder merrily firing arrows at helicopters as he shouted orders into his radio, and he snorted out something like a laugh.  “Seriously, Nat.  There’s got to be someone still on staff that has a degree in psychology or—or witchcraft or something.  I’m an _engineer_.”

 

“And not a great one,” she said, wryly, eyeing his blueprints through the unfortunately transparent screen.  “Telling you right now, that elbow’s not going to last a week.”’

 

Tony frowned.  “You think?  It’d be a lot lighter than his current design, and it doesn’t have all that weird muscle texture to it, you know?”  He wrinkled his nose.  “I mean, come on, the star on the bicep—“

 

“You just leaving it blank, then?”

 

“I guess.  There’s not really a reason for him to have a target  painted on him, you know?  The matte black’s a lot more practical.  I’ll buy him some stickers or something if he really wants to accessorize.”  

 

“You’ll need a lot more reinforcement on that joint either way,” she offered.  “You haven’t seen him fight—hand to hand, he depends on it to be able to take a lot of damage.  Throws himself off bridges, rips cars apart, that sort of thing.”  Her hand drifted up to touch the swollen skin around her eye, and if Tony didn’t know her so well, know how in control of herself she was, he’d swear she hadn’t realized she’d done it.  “Seems like the star might be something you want to leave up to him, though.”

 

“He’s still learning he needs to eat when his stomach does that weird growling thing.  I think we can safely say a two-inch piece of steel on his _robot arm_ probably isn’t a big concern right now.”  But he added the reinforcements like she’d suggested, and when he looked up, she was smiling at him fondly.

 

“Is it just the one file, or is there more to come?”

 

Natasha shrugged in a way that meant _probably more_ and thus, Tony became guardian of All of Bucky's Deep Dark Secrets.  At least the ones they’ve uncovered.

 

Which. That part _sucks._

 

"Steve, hey," Tony says, and pats Steve's giant shoulder.  "Hey. It's okay, it's--"

 

"Oh God," Steve groans and curls forward again, bracing himself on the sink. "Don't, Stark. Just. _Don't._ "

 

And that stings something new, don't it, because he's always been Tony before, but he supposes it probably isn't fair how much he looks like the man partially responsible for whatever's kept the Soldier trudging along thus far. He tries not to take it personally.  

 

He does draw back a little, though, because Steve's already gripping the edges of the sink hard enough that the ceramic's splintering in his fingers. He doesn't think Steve would mean to hurt him, necessarily, but he also isn't quite sure what that blank look in Steve's eyes means, and it's kind of frightening so he keeps his distance. Pulls back a little.

 

"You don't say a word," Steve snarls finally and that flat gaze snaps up to meet his in the mirror. He's practically baring his teeth, and he's still doing a number on the poor sink, so Tony holds his hands up, palms out in surrender.

 

"Secret's safe with me, Captain," he says and he tries to keep it light, tries to sound, above all, like he's not a little afraid of his own teammate, but maybe it's the _Captain_ instead of _Steve_ , because those massive shoulders slump.

 

Tony can't often reconcile the Steve he knows with the Steve he's seen in the history books, the tiny, fierce little thing that Bucky must've known, the only kid in Brooklyn who didn't take "ninety-five pounds soaking wet and the shittiest lungs known to man" as the not-so-subtle military discharge it should've been.  He's only known Steve as The Captain, that bigger-than-life caricature that had graced his bedroom walls for an embarrassing span of his childhood.  And that doesn't really mesh with the Steve he knows, either, but it's closer than this.  Curled in on himself like this, he very nearly looks his actual age--which Tony might not know, granted, but looks like he should be drinking beer in a frat house, not...well.

 

Not doing this. No one should be doing this. Hell, _Tony_ shouldn't be doing this--he can't even handle himself half the time, what business does he have poking into anyone's personal life?

 

"You know someone's going to find out eventually," Tony reminds him, gentle as he can be about it. "Especially if he starts coming around and remembering."

 

"Yes," Steve says heavily and he drags the back of his hand over his mouth and spits into the sink. "But I think he's got enough to deal with for now, don't you?"

 

On the screen in Steve's bedroom, in flickering shades of blue, the Soldier curls up like a dog next to the patterns and, incredibly, manages to fall asleep.

 

"Yeah," Tony agrees.  He doesn't point out that this? This is not dealing.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woah this took forever because i'm garbage
> 
> sorry boutcha
> 
> also, i didn't realize I liked Clint so much and then three thousand words later

chapter six: clint

 

He doesn't eat around them. Actually, Clint is pretty sure he doesn't eat.

 

It's the weirdest fuckin' thing, right, and Clint isn't totally sure why he notices at all. Clint's observant— _Hawkeye_ , ha ha and also fuckin' _ha—_ but something usually gets lost in translation between attention to detail and his ability to understand.

 

It's not his fault, okay, he was literally raised in a barn—well, lived in 'em on and off, anyways, which should totally count—but even if he could read people as effortlessly as Nat, if he could worm his way into someone's headspace with a cocked grin and a shitty joke like Stark, even, he doesn't think it would help. He wouldn't understand the Soldier any better, because really, the guy's barely human by this point, no matter what Steve says.

 

Steve is really stupid about his pets.

 

Nat scowls when Clint calls him that, fixes him with those cat-bright eyes and reminds him, "He has a name, Clint, don't you take that from him too," and it's too easy to forget she wasn't always Natasha, too easy to forget she should have an accent when she speaks, same as the Soldier.  She is so, so very excellent at hiding, even from him. _Especially_ from him.

 

Except Clint can't unsee it now, can't watch the Soldier shake himself apart over something as simple as staying seated long enough for Cap to shear off his matted curls and wonder if she used to be like that, once.

 

Wonders who cut her hair, who cupped a hand over her shoulder and brought a glass to her lips and urged her, gently, "Drink." Wonders who told her things like _it's okay_ and _you're okay_ and _breathe come on, everything is fine, you're safe._

 

Wonders if her smile would touch her eyes now if there had been a Steve Rogers there for her, when she got out.

 

There's no way of knowing if it helps the Soldier. He stops shaking when Steve touches him but he keeps his eyes fixed firmly on his own bare feet, toes curled under, and doesn't say a goddamn word. Clint thinks it's pretty likely it's not doing much more than allowing him to relax into the familiarity of taking orders. Just switching out his old handler for a new one--just because Steve looks at the Soldier like he hung the fuckin' moon doesn't mean the Soldier registers him as anything more than another voice to obey.

 

And he is _frighteningly_ willing to obey. 

 

Clint only does it once, completely by accident. He's no commander, okay, he's not used to anyone taking what he says terribly seriously, but he's a loud fucker with a big mouth and he doesn't even register it, at first.

 

He's trying to cook. ‘Trying,’ being the operative word, because Clint once managed to start a small grease fire making salad dressing, but. Nat's home from her mission, stumbled in around two am with her hair in a ragged bun slouched low on the back of her neck and heavy rings bruised under her eyes. She didn't bother with makeup, which meant she'd either been up long enough to have sweated it off, or the mission was bad enough she couldn't manage a mirror, after.  Both of them twist his gut the same, ‘cause she's the best friend he's got in the whole wide world, and even though she's been risking her neck since they met he never quite manages to imagine _anything_ without Nat. Can't imagine a person-shaped hole where she'd been. He doesn't even like to try.

 

And Clint didn't say much when she came home, let her stagger off to her own quarters and drop onto whatever flat surface she found first. She'd find him if she needed him. Always did.

 

She slept for eighteen hours straight, so Clint made spaghetti and meatballs--or something really close, anyways--since he doubts she'd remember to feed herself otherwise.

 

Except the meatballs are burning and he's pretty sure the spaghetti isn't supposed to be boiling a second time, much less a third, and the fire alarm is making this concerned little chirp—why does Stark insist on shoving AI in everything, god _damn—_ and the Soldier is the first person he sees, hovering weirdly inside the hallway door.

 

Clint would prefer not to know how long he’s been standing there, cat-silent.  Fuckin’ unsettling.

 

"Hey, Frosty," Clint says just as the alarm escalates into a full-on wail, "can you grab that?" He nods towards the merrily-bubbling pot of spaghetti. The oven is actually belching smoke and it's amazing the alarm hasn't woken Nat yet.

 

And he wasn't clear that the Soldier should grab it by the handles, okay, doesn't tell him to use an oven mitt or his metal hand, so really, Clint supposes it's probably technically his fault.

 

He manages to wave enough of the resulting smoke into the vent over the oven that the alarm gets its shit together just a little, and he's got half a sentence out of his mouth before he even notices. 

 

"Thanks, man, you can put that down on the--"

 

It dies on his tongue.

 

The Soldier did grab that. Grabbed the big pot around the middle like he's hoisting up a sack of flour and his metal arm's gone a worrying shade of orange where it's touching the pot, but that has nothing on the violent, blistered red striped down his bare flesh-and-blood arm.  His shirt might have helped a little, but Clint's willing to bet his belly doesn't look much better.

 

"Uh," Clint says, and the Soldier just stares at him, like he's awaiting the next order. His goddamn _breathing_ didn't even change. 

 

Fuck.

 

"You've got a," he tries, and the Soldier cocks his head. He is looking at Clint, kind of, like he's trying to make eye contact like a real person, except those baby blues are fixed a good six inches to the left of Clint's nose.  Clint recognizes the strategy. Hell, he's _used_ the strategy, pick a point close to where eye contact would be, cause most people don't really bother with checking.

 

See above: Clint is _observant_.

 

"Put it down," he manages, finally, and when the Soldier does--on another burner, so he's got some degree of context clues down--he says, "You want I should grab the first aid kit, or...?"

 

The Soldier cocks his head. Doesn't say anything. Actually, now he thinks about it, Clint isn't 100% that he's ever actually heard the Soldier speak directly, just on the security cams.  "Shit, man, I didn't mean—doesn’t it hurt?"

 

And the Soldier frowns, just this tiny little wrinkle between his eyebrows, like Clint's said something in a language he's never learned.

 

"I don't know," he says finally, no accent, Brooklyn-flat, and Clint isn't sure what he was expecting, but that mumble, pitched so low even Clint's excellent hearing has a hard time picking it out, really isn't it.

 

Clint doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't say a fucking thing. He patches up the burn best he can, though, and he doesn't miss the fact that the Soldier doesn't so much as flinch when Clint smears antibiotic cream all down the inside of his real-boy arm. Doesn't miss the fact that when Clint says, "uh, could you, your shirt...?" he strips it off and drops It to the floor before the sentence is even totally out of Clint's mouth.

 

Clint maintains eye contact and very carefully does not look at the latticework of scar tissue, impossibly pale against the Soldier's already paper-white skin.

 

Well. Shit.

 

*

 

He tries not to be jealous. He does. And he knows, really, that Nat isn't his—she isn't _anyone's_ , she reminds him often and loudly—and it isn't even a sex thing.

 

Hey, he'd be down if she offered, no mistake, but that's not how they are. Not how they've ever been. But she gets him in a way no one ever has and he gets her and they work, they work so well as a duo that even his stupid dick's admiration of the way her jumpsuit clings to her ass can't get in the way.

 

And don't get him wrong—that is a fine, fine ass. He tells her so often, and usually she just snaps back, "Yes, thank you, I actually _had_ noticed all the staring because I am a _government spy_ and they pay me to _notice things_." And then she usually punches him in the arm, hard enough to bruise just a little which basically passes for affection where she's concerned.

 

Which. Fair.

 

And it's not—it’s not like he doesn't get her thing with the Soldier. It's not like he doesn't see the obvious parallels, okay, he's not the brightest knife in the fuckin' drawer but he's not an idiot, either. She gets...something out of it, he's sure, some kind of catharsis from the hours she'll spend perched cross-legged on the edge of the Soldier's mattress, chattering away at him in Russian while he lies flat on his belly at her feet like a dog and doesn't contribute a fucking word.

 

(Clint knows this because he has occasional security duty, watching over the Soldier to make sure he stays locked up, safe-ish, in his quarters. And he has never, ever swapped duty with Thor every Tuesday evening so he can watch Nat smile at the Soldier like she's half-forgotten the cameras are even there.)

 

She's remarkably persistent, for as little as the Soldier gives her in return. In fact, the only thing he ever does is once, tentatively, as she's telling him the kind of story that has her eyes suspiciously glassy and pink, he just reaches on up like it’s nothing and wraps his real hand around her ankle.  Holds on. She blinks down at him, pauses in her story.

 

Her hands are busy with a tangle of what looks like black cotton cording and she's been doing some complicated kind of weaving as she talked. They still as the Soldier's hand closes around her bare skin, just under where the rolled-up hem of her skinny jeans skims the knob of ankle bone. "Bucky?" she says after several long moments.

 

The Soldier, for his part, doesn't move at all. Doesn't look up at her. She swipes a manicured thumb under both eyes, wiping away tears that never actually fell, and says again, softer, "Bucky, hey," and his shoulders round, his hand withdrawing to tuck up half under his chest. 

 

Where his sleeve's pushed up, Clint can clearly see a dark ring of bruising (maybe?) all round his pale wrist. She touches it, gentle, and frowns. "Sorry," he mumbles. "Sorry."

 

She doesn't say anything else and neither does he, but she stays near another hour, her hands working at the cording surprisingly effortlessly, especially since she's barely looking down at it.

 

It is not jealously, Clint reminds himself as she slips the bracelet—turk’s head knots, the kind you find mass-produced in surf shops all down the coast, he didn't even know she knew how to make those was she raised anywhere near the sea?—around the Soldier's flesh-and-blood wrist.

 

The Soldier lets her pry it out from under him, lets her guide him to his feet and to the bathroom sink, so she can soak the new bracelet.  "It's supposed to shrink," she says, soft and in English. Maybe for Clint's benefit, because he wouldn't put it past her to know about his shift-swapping.  Wouldn't be surprised if Thor told her, the big idiot.  "It'll stay on 'til it wears off, or 'til you don't need it anymore."

 

The black cotton doesn't quite cover the bruising and the Soldier pulls at it, experimentally, with his other hand.  Doesn't look at her. Doesn't smile.

 

Doesn't take the bracelet off, either.  Tugs at it with his teeth sometimes, worries at it like he’s grounding, like it’s keeping him anchored in place, but never takes it off.  Clint has no idea if he likes it, but he keeps it, and soon enough the only dark skin on his wrist is where the ink bled from the cotton cord a little.

 

It's not jealousy.

 

It's not.

 

*

 

It's too weird, trying to even draw a parallel between the Soldier and the bright caricature of Bucky Barnes he'd grown up with. Because he had comics, okay, just because he didn't have a static bedroom or an actual educational record didn't mean he was raised by _wolves_ , and. He'd always liked the Bucky character. Always found him a little more palatable than comic-Cap's waxing patriotic, and plus, Bucky was a sniper and Clint was a sniper, even if no one at the circus called it that—“sharpshooter" and "marksman" tended to look better on the flyers than "could take out your eye from two hundred paces without actually trying”—so. The hero-worship thing Stark's got going on with Cap, not so much, his bag, but he'd liked Bucky.

 

"I don't know where they came up with the costume," Steve had said, big ol’ puppy dog eyes trained on the faded cover of Clint's single remaining _Captain America_ (number eighteen, squirreled away somehow in a box of old tax documents) thumb stroking fond over the bold, inked curve of Bucky's cheek. "Wore black around his eyes sometimes, to cut down on the glare and all, but the mask—“ and he'd given a rueful little chuckle, sorta sound that made Clint uncomfortably aware of how very fuckin' _young_ Steve was. "He always laughed at me in my Captain America getup. Said I was the ugliest broad onstage."

 

Clint is having a really, _really_ hard time imagining the Soldier laughing. Still. He's been trying for, what, nearly a week now.

 

The guy doesn't even blink right—just _stares_ , flat and glassy and so creepily blank it makes Clint's skin crawl. He wonders what's going on in the Soldier's head, if it's even conscious thought, or maybe just an animal wariness of everything around him. Or just white noise. Buzzing. 

 

Wonders if that can be done to someone this completely, if the kid in those comics got stripped down and down and down to bones and nerves and twitching muscle memory. And then he'll watch the Soldier sit and stare unmovingly at a bare patch of carpet for forty-three-and-a-half minutes, and he'll wonder what, exactly, Steve thinks he can do. What any of them can do.

 

_Bucky isn't home,_ he thinks, not unkindly, as he worries the carbon steel fletching of an arrow between thumb and forefinger, a nervous tic that Nat never fails to point out. Bucky probably doesn't want to come home, anyways.

 

Clint wouldn't. He'd had a taste, hadn't he, had a few short weeks of someone else mucking all around in his mind, fuckin' puppet with a god's hand jammed up his ass. And he knows everyone's thinkin' it—how could they not? He'd _flipped_ when he'd come back to himself after all, woke up to the wreck of his city and his handler-cum-father-figure just a cooling lump in the morgue and Nat looking at him like she looks at a new car she's planning to steal, sidelong, like she's not sure what might trip the alarm.

 

He'd flipped and he'd drunk himself blind and stupid and he'd maybe made some vague back-alley decisions that wound up in one failed mugging, two broken kneecaps—would-be mugger's, obviously, not his—and a gag order accompanied by a Very Serious Lecture from Director Fury.

 

"You're fucking up," Fury had snapped, and jabbed Clint in the chest with one finger. Clint hadn't flinched. "Either stop fucking up or stop _showing_ up. Got it?"

 

So Clint stopped showing up for a while. Easy. Checked himself into some ritzy kinda rehab populated by other jacked-up government agents and it's saying something about their line of work that none of the doctors—all young and beautiful and impeccably dressed, not a lab coat in sight, and always apologetic when they had to sedate him—so much as flinched when he starts in with his opening line: "So I was raised in a circus."

 

One doctor actually chuckled at his lame attempt at humor, so she'd immediately become his primary therapist—her name is Cheryl and she's super-smart and she tells him all sorts of sweet things like _"No, Clint, it's really not crazy to hoard food away even though it's been a good ten years since you actually missed a meal,"_ and _"what you did was not your choice, and it was_ not your fault. _"_

 

The Soldier doesn't have a Cheryl, though, and it's been about a million more years and a million times worse for him. Probably. He hasn't read the file.

 

Nat wouldn't let him, which would normally just encourage him to wheedle it out of Stark—who, for a man who has literally never gone without anything in his life, is weirdly eager to make Clint like him, so maybe there's something to the whole _money doesn't buy happiness_ spiel—but. She'd got that look in her eyes, that unblinking, laser focus that means Clint is worryingly close to treading on Deep Dark Secrets and although Clint loves Deep Dark Secrets he loves Nat slightly more.

 

Plus, she gets punchy when she's mad, so.

 

So Clint empathizes with the guy, definitely, but he doesn't understand. He'd just about managed to get the hang of the real world again, fresh out of the facility, all fuzzy and warm with the promise that yes, he was getting better, there was actually a getting better from this and then--

 

Then, the Soldier. 

 

And allllllll that shit he thought he'd dealt with, everything the facility had drugged and therapied away, all wrapped up in a creepy-quiet new housemate.  He can be forgiven, probably, for not wanting to be around the guy all that much, because he knows they're different, okay, knows Loki— _sonuvabitch,_ his brain supplies automatically, _that sonuvabitch can't suffer enough for what he did_ , far as Clint's concerned, but Thor gets all sad around the eyes when anyone brings Loki up, so Clint never does—was a whole different game than Hydra. Or the Red Room.

 

Still.

 

He checks on the guy once, after the whole spaghetti incident. Only once, only to assuage his own guilt, probably, but the burn's half-healed like sixteen hours after it happens, so he doesn't really need to feel _too_ bad.

 

When he tries to check in on him, the Soldier is asleep.

 

Clint finds this out only because there's a tiny little rasp of fabric on carpet from the ajar closet door, and he's nosy like a fox on his best days, so of course he checks it out.  Of course.

 

And the Soldier is asleep in a little nest of—towels? Those look like towels, definitely, although they're grease-stained and nothing like the thick, fluffy beauties Stark has stocked every bathroom in the Tower with.  They look like they once belonged to a mechanic, so he probably stole them from Stark in the first place, 'cause Clint can't imagine where he'd have got them otherwise.

 

He's bundled them up in a meager pile in the corner, half-hidden underneath a collection of winter coats Stark's probably forgotten he even has. The nest isn't big enough for the solid bulk of him to stretch out, so he's bundled up in the corner too, face pressed into the hollow of his armpit like he's hiding.  His breath is so shallow, Clint has to watch his ribs for a full twenty seconds to even confirm it's there. He sleeps like a _corpse._

 

The bright blisters are just neat, pink stripes of new skin by this point, but that's not what Clint is looking at.  Because Clint has figured out why he's never seen the Soldier eat, why Steve could put away enough food for five men and still ask for dessert, but the Soldier never so much as approaches the kitchen when they all sit down for a meal.

 

He's been stealing from them, kind of—his nest is filled with the half-eaten remains of last night's dinner, not much more than bones and bread and the occasional scrap of meat, and Clint can very clearly see Nat's favorite lipstick around some of those bite marks, so he knows it's not food the Soldier's eaten himself. Clint distinctly remembers clearing the table, remembers tipping the remains into a trash can that probably cost more than his best ( _read: only_ ) suit, so. The Soldier has been scrounging.

From the garbage. Like an animal.

 

The Soldier is also awake, one blue eye slitted open and watching him, wary, which is fair because he _totally_ cornered a deranged ex-Soviet assassin without meaning to, and Nat has taught him more than once how unwise that is.  Clint smiles. Tries to, anyways, but the Soldier's single visible eye only narrows.

 

"There's no need to, uh," he says stupidly, and waves at half a dinner roll near the Soldier's left ear.  "There's always plenty of fresh food."

 

The Soldier is quiet for a long, long time. Clint tries really hard to not even think about sudden movements, even though his heart's jackhammering double-time against the inside of his ribcage. 

 

"No," the Soldier— _Bucky,_ no accent this time and that's _Bucky_ —mumbles. "No, there isn't."

 

And ain't _that_ the saddest fuckin' thing Clint’s ever heard.

 

 

 


End file.
